The Irish standard., 1887-09-03
SERMON BY AN ORANCEMAN.
A Remarkable Discourse Recently
Delivered BY an Ulster Or
ange Minister.
BRIsCoE's SENSIBLE ADVICE.
Orange Professions Open Old and Bitter
Sores and Tend to 1nfame
Party Hatred.

The Tyrone Constitution tOrange Or
gan) publishes, ''by request, I" the ami
versary sermon by the Rev. G.. V. Bri'
coe, preached in Omagh parish church
recently. The preacher first described
the religious troubles in England, anC
the end of them at Boyne, in Ireland
where William overcame James. He
continued
OF those who fought on King James
side-they were brave men too. "Change
kings with us, and we will fight you
again, one of the Irish officers said
But they were beaten in engagement
after engagement-at Cork, at Kinsale
at Aughrim, they were beaten. After
Limerick, where they made their last
stand, they were allowed to go to
France, and ten thousand men chose
this exile rather than stay where they
had lost all. 'When the wild cry of the
women who stood watching their de-
parture was hushed, the silence of death
settled down on the South of Ireland.
For hundred years the country re-
mained at peace, but the peace was the
peace of despair" The history of Ire
land during that period cannot be
thought of without shame by one loving
England. BY means of the rotten bor-
oughs the Government was in the
hands of a few noble Protestant fami-
lies. Sixty seats were in the hands of
three families alone. In fact. the Irish
House was returned by small group
of mobiles, who we're recognized as ''Par-
liamentary undertakers, I" and who un-
dertook to manage" Parliament on
their own terms. "Po]itics for these
men, again to quote Mr.. Greene,
"were mere means of public plumber
they were glutted with pensions, pre-
ferments and bribes. Presbyterians
and Roman Catholics were alike treated
as foreigners in their own country" +"
Ireland was the worst governed country
in modern Europe. 1t was at the mercy
of ''a plundering aristocrary." The
second Pitt-that great statesman
saw that the barbarous peasantry who
were shot and dragooned down might
rise some day, and he urged reform.
But he was powerless or almost so, for
it was only by ruinous bribery that the
English Government could induce the
Irish governing class to part with any
of their lucrative privileges. In 1892
he forced on the Irish Parliament mea-
sures for the admission of Roman
Catholics to the electoral franchise, and
as safeguard to themselves the Irish
borough-mongers founded the Orange
institution. But even the great Pitt
could not undo the effects of years Of
bad government. The Roman Catho-
lie reasantry, brooding over their mis-
cry and wrongs, stirred by the French
revolution, at last rose. Famine
stricken, naked, with blood-shot eyes,
the whole South rose, cold terror seized
the governing class and they-the Par
liamentary undertakers, the MOBILES
rushed to the North and raised there
the dread religious war-cry. They had
done wrong, and to defend themselves
they raised the religious war-cry. They
said the South had risen against Protes-
tantism. The South had not. 1t had
only risen against 1.-The hideous cruel
ties," the shameful neglect of the Irish
Government. Of course Ulster was
alarmed, and hastened to enroll itself
into Orange lodges; thousands of men
with no religion but the religion of the
devil and of destitution were in arms in
the South. But it suited the governing
class to say the South had risen to re-
establish Catholicism, and Ulster was
alarmed and famed into religious hate.
The wretched Southern peasantrY, as is
the manner of barbarous and desperate
men, committed fearful atrocities; but
the rebellion was easily suppressed, and
the rebels were shot down and hung in
hundreds. Lord CORVALLIS, the Lord
Lieutenant, a humane and wise ruler.
complained of the difficulty he found in
restraining the Orangemen from butch
ing the miserable natives. The fine
liberty loving n orthern Protestants had
allowed themselves to be deceived by
the governing class. That same noble
spirit of Puritanism which had struck
the last blow at resolute monarchy now
itself in the SUPPORT of the